{"id":40203,"date":"2018-01-31T13:37:58","date_gmt":"2018-01-31T13:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=40203"},"modified":"2018-01-31T18:25:25","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T18:25:25","slug":"sony-and-tencent-team-up-to-launch-new-label-in-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/sony-and-tencent-team-up-to-launch-new-label-in-asia\/","title":{"rendered":"Sony and Tencent launch a record label together in Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sony Music and Chinese giant Tencent are starting a label together.<\/p>\n

Liquid State has been launched in Hong Kong this week, with a core focus on EDM and electronic music across Asia.<\/p>\n

The label will also locally get involved in live touring and nightclub events.<\/p>\n

Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) is majority-owned by Chinese media giant Tencent Holdings, which currently has a market cap value in excess of US $500bn on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.<\/p>\n

TME itself is believed to be worth in the region of $10bn.<\/p>\n

In December, TME closed a stock swap deal whereby it acquired a 10% stake in Spotify.<\/a>\u00a0As part of the deal, Daniel Ek’s company also took ownership of a tenth of equity in TME.<\/p>\n

In other words, Sony has just launched a label with a company part-owned by Spotify.<\/p>\n

And like Universal, Warner and Merlin,\u00a0Sony\u00a0is itself a minority stake holder in\u00a0Spotify.<\/p>\n

Funny old world.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>

“Together we will make Liquid State the destination for a wide range of highly talented new and established global and local artists.”<\/p>\n

Denis Handlin, Sony Music<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sony Music Australia CEO and Chairman Denis Handlin of Liquid State’s launch: “These are exciting times for the music industry and Liquid State has been created to support and enhance the discovery and development of electronic and EDM talent across the Asia region.<\/p>\n

“Together we will make Liquid State the destination for a wide range of highly talented new and established global and local artists. I would also like to thank Tencent \u00a0for sharing the passion and vision to provide music fans in China and around the world with exciting new music, unique experiences and incredible artists through Liquid State.”<\/p>\n

As part of the deal,\u00a0Tencent-owned\u00a0media channels such as\u00a0WeChat, QQ, Tencent Video\u00a0and\u00a0QZone\u00a0will actively support\u00a0Liquid\u00a0State\u00a0and its artists.<\/p>\n

Tencent will also push the artists on its digital music channels such as\u00a0QQ Music, Kugou Music\u00a0and\u00a0Kuwo Music.<\/p>\n

Cussion Pang<\/b>, CEO of Tencent Music Entertainment Group commented:\u00a0“With the formation of Liquid State, our goal is to create an unmatched culture exchange between the East and the West through the power of electronic dance music.<\/p>\n

“It is a music genre like no other, and together with Sony Music Entertainment, we aim to build a win-win solution for all of our stakeholders and believe that the collaboration will give birth to some truly memorable moments in both the music and culture sectors for years to come.”<\/p>\n

Multiplatinum-selling Sony Music act Alan Walker (pictured) has signed up for involvement with Liquid State.<\/p>\n

The Norwegian DJ\/producer will reveal collaborations on Liquid State in the coming months.<\/p>\n

“Asia has always been such a special place for me so I\u2019m thrilled\u00a0to help Sony Music and Tencent with the launch of Liquid State,”\u00a0Walker said.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m convinced that Liquid State will grow to play a significant role in breaking new artists from Asia on a global scale, as well as enabling international artists to unleash the huge potential that lies within the Asian market.”<\/p>\n

Others on the label’s initial roster include Grammy-nominated star\u00a0ZHU<\/span><\/b>, while China’s\u00a0DJ Lizzy\u00a0<\/b>and Korean duo\u00a0Junkilla<\/b>\u00a0are the first artists from the Asia region to be signed to\u00a0Liquid State.<\/b><\/p>\n

The deal gives Tencent the ability to host Sony Music copyrights on its own music services, as well as licensing them to rival digital platforms in the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liquid State was launched in Hong Kong this week<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[227,4037],"class_list":["post-40203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-sony-music","tag-tencent-music"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}